Qualityland

PETER’S PROBLEM

The old man sits down and stares at a screen. There is a strange object in front of the monitor. It consists of six rows of predominantly quadratic buttons, on which numbers and letters can be seen. However, these figures seem to make no sense, read neither from right-to-left nor from left-to-right.

“It’s a keyboard,” says the old man.

“I know,” says Peter.

He does actually know, even if he has never used a real one himself. The old man begins to hammer away on the keyboard with all ten fingers, and so speedily that Peter is unable to follow.

“Now, let’s see,” he murmurs.

“What are you doing?”

“Hacking into TheShop’s customer database.”

“Is that possible?” asks Peter. “Aren’t there any security precautions?”

The old man just laughs.

“But what if you get caught?”

The old man shoots a frantic look over his shoulder. Then he breathes a sigh of relief.

“What is it?” asks Peter.

“Nothing, I just had the feeling that my mother was creeping up from behind.”

The old man stares back at the screen. After three minutes and five seconds, Peter gets bored and asks: “Why are you sitting behind this glass screen, by the way?”

“Perhaps you heard about the biological terror attack in QuantityLand 9,” says the old man.

Peter shakes his head.

“A group of racist scientists developed an artificial virus that afflicts only humans with dark pigments. It was a catastrophe. Over 100,000 people died before the government managed to manufacture an antidote.”

“But that must have been huge in the news,” says Peter. “Why didn’t I hear anything about it?”

“Some algorithm was obviously of the opinion that it wouldn’t interest you.”

“What does all that have to do with the glass box?”

“I’m keeping strangers from accessing my DNA.”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing can make its way out of the box. Any hair, any fragment of beard stubble would enable my enemies to sequence my DNA. And it’s not only possible to construct a virus that targets entire groups of the population or perhaps even all humans—it’s also possible to construct a virus that targets just one single DNA. Mine, for example. But for that the arseholes would have to get a DNA sample from me first. And they won’t get one!”

“You’re paranoid,” says Peter.

“I’m not. I’m just better informed than you.”

“So you do have enemies?”

“Not that I know of.”

Suddenly the old man smacks the palm of his hand against the side of the monitor.

“Aha. Here you are,” he says. He reads some of the numbers on the screen. “That’s strange.”

“What?” asks Peter.

“For analytical purposes, TheShop puts each of its customers into a specific drawer, a so-called cluster. For example, customers from cluster 4096 are white men over 64, who suffer from delusions of grandeur, have at least two private jets, and have wives who are more than thirty-two years younger than them from one of the QuantityLands.”

“And?”

“You’re in cluster 8191: black postmenopausal single women, with no independent income, a liking for old comedies starring Jennifer Aniston, and at least two cats.”

“But that’s ridiculous!” exclaims Peter.

The old man studies him. “Hmm, you’re right. Now that you mention it.” He laughs. “Oh. No. Sorry. My mistake.”

Once again, he smacks the palm of his right hand against the side of the clunky monitor.

The display flickers briefly.

“Here it is,” says the old man. “You’re in category 8192: white men under the age of 32. With low income, slightly racist tendencies, small penises, and an interest in large sporting events.”

“But that’s not true either!” cries Peter. “Everyone who knows me knows, that I… erm…”

“That you hate large sporting events?”

“Yes, amongst other things.”

There is a bottle of oxygen next to the old man. He puts the mask over his mouth and nose and takes a deep breath.

“So is Kiki right?” asks Peter. “My profile isn’t correct?”

The old man nods. “And the problem is bigger than you think. This isn’t about your lilac eel vibrator.”

“Dolphin,” says Peter. “It’s a dolphin. And it’s pink.”

The old man chuckles.

“Why is the problem bigger than I think?” asks Peter.

“The net morphs.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“It means that every individual experiences a different digital world. It’s not only search results, advertising, news, films, and music that are personalized. The offers, the prices, even the design and structure of the net change according to who enters this magical world of mirrors, and even according to how they’re feeling. If you’re horny, you might see offers for highly erotic lady bots everywhere, or if you’re feeling low, they want to foist psycho pharmaceuticals on to you, and if you’re afraid, they’ll offer you the blueprints of a self-printing pistol. You must have heard the saying, ‘Everyone lives in their own world.’ In the digital space, that’s not just a cliché. It’s literally true. You are living in your own world. A world that constantly customizes itself to you.”

The old man closes his eyes and immediately begins to snore. Peter is confused initially, then knocks against the glass. The old man opens his eyes and continues to speak without losing his thread. “We can’t make the mistake here that all the others make. The net doesn’t customize itself to you, of course, but to the image it has of you. Your profiles. Do you see your problem now? If your profiles are incorrect…”

“Then I’m living in the wrong world,” murmurs Peter.

“Then you’re living in the wrong world,” repeats the old man. He chuckles.

“And as Adorno said: ‘Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.’ Although I’m sure he wasn’t thinking about the internet when he said that…”

“Who’s Adorno?” asks Peter.

“A philosopher. You do know what a philosopher is?”

“Yes. Someone who tries to solve problems through logic alone.”

The old man chuckles. “What you just described actually sounds more like a computer.”

“But I can’t be the only person this is happening to,” cries Peter in agitation. “Why is no one talking about this?”

“Well, perhaps they are, but not in your newsfeed,” says the old man. “Or perhaps it’s down to the fact that most people don’t even realize that their profiles are wrong. They simply become what the system believes them to be.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“That the algo-rhythm’s gonna get you!” says the old man, doing an awkward dance. It’s an embarrassing sight, and he soon realizes that and stops. He holds the keyboard up to the glass. “Qwertyuiop,” he says.

“Excuse me?”

“Qwertyuiop,” says the old man. “Do you know why the letters on every keyboard are arranged so strangely?”

“No idea.”

“The first keyboards were created for typewriters that operated with so-called type levers. These levers unfortunately had a predilection for linking up. That’s why the printer C. L. Sholes came up with the clever idea of separating the most frequently occurring sequences of letters as far as possible from one another.”

“What does that have to do with me?” asks Peter.

“Do computers have typing levers?” asks the old man.

“No.”

“So why do our keyboards still use Qwertyuiop and not, for example, the supposedly much more ergonomic Dvorak keyboard arrangement?”

“Probably because too many people learned to type on an old keyboard.”

“Correct. We call that path dependence. Decisions made in the past about what direction to go in make it difficult to change the path in the present. Even if you’re on the wrong one. Now do you see what that has to do with you?”

“I’m afraid I do. But it’s not my decisions that are forcing me onto this predetermined path.”

“That’s correct,” says the old man. “If the system believes you’re a loser who spends his days eating junk food and watching trashy films, it will suggest trashy films and drown you in junk-food advertising. It will match you with a partner who it places at an equally low level to you. If you’re looking for an apartment, it will only suggest dives that it has defined as being suitable for you, and if you look for job advertisements, it will withhold the placements it doesn’t consider you to be qualified for. If you should manage to apply for these anyway, the algorithms will filter you out long before your portfolio appears on a personnel manager’s desk. If someone is only offered the options of a Useless, it’s very difficult not to be a Useless. A profile is a self-fulfilling prophecy. A self-fulfilling identity. Of course, it works the other way around too, for example if the system considers you to be a complete stud. But I don’t think that’s your problem.”

“No.” Peter scratches his head. “Because my profiles are wrong, I’m living in the wrong world.”

“Yes,” says the old man. “That’s your problem. That’s Peter’s problem. Hey, that sounds good. That should be the name for it. I hereby baptize this problem, Peter’s Problem.” The old man chuckles. “It makes me happy to know that I’ve just created a term that will stand the test of time. A formulation that will outlive its creator and live on in colloquial language. Soon people will say things like, ‘I’m up to my neck in Peter’s Problem.’ The psychiatrist will tell his patient, ‘What you have is a clear case of Peter’s Problem.’ Or a father will scold his little daughter, ‘Don’t make such a fuss. You’re acting as if you had Peter’s Problem!’ Maybe the president will even say one day, ‘All of us here have Peter’s Problem!’”

“Because my profiles are wrong, I’m living in the wrong world,” repeats Peter.

“Oh, even if all the profiles were right, the algorithms would still discriminate against us.”

“But why?” asks Peter. “Shouldn’t machines be objective?”

“Nonsense,” says the old man. “Take the following example: a human resources algorithm learns by searching through numerous decisions that human personnel managers have made before him. It establishes that black-skinned applicants are rarely employed. So it’s only logical that it won’t even invite black-skinned applicants to interview. Do you understand? If you put prejudices into an algorithm, prejudices come out.”

“A racist machine?”

“Worse. A racist machine concealed beneath a cloak of objectivity.” The old man chuckles. “When I was even younger,” he says, “Microsoft released a chat bot called Tay, which was supposed to learn from the interactions of its conversation partners. And it did. After just sixteen hours, Microsoft withdrew the bot from the net because it denied the Holocaust.”

“The what?”

“The mass genocide of Jews initiated by Hitler.”

“They didn’t say anything about that in the musical…”

“Well, if that’s the case,” says the old man, “then I’m sure it can’t really have happened…”

Peter thinks for a moment. The old man has fallen asleep again. Peter raps on the glass and he gives a start.

“Please change my profile!” says Peter.

“Do what?”

“Correct the data!” says Peter. “See to it that my profile really profiles me.”

“You?” asks the old man.

“Yes, me,” says Peter.

The old man chuckles. “So who are you?”

This simple question provokes in Peter a series of three emotional states, one followed quickly by the other. Firstly, annoyance. Secondly, embarrassment. Thirdly, horror.

“I…” stammers Peter. “I… am…”

“Spare yourself the effort,” says the old man. “Even if you knew who you are, I still wouldn’t be able to help you.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“For you it amounts to the same thing.”

“Why don’t you want to help me?”

“Peeping through the keyhole is one thing,” says the old man. “Usually no one notices. But if you break down the door and move the furniture around, then any idiot who goes into the room after you will be able to see that something’s not right.”

An audio signal can be heard, and the old man immediately reaches for a small pill bottle, takes out a tablet, and begins to chew it. He comes up close to the glass and whispers: “Also, I don’t want to be pulled into your story too much, because from a dramaturgical point of view you’re the hero, and that would probably make me the mentor figure. But the problem with these wise old mentors is that, statistically speaking, they have really miserable chances of survival. So I prefer to remain the hero of my own story. I don’t want to die, after all. On the contrary. Guess how old I am.”

“No idea,” says Peter. “Old?”

“Older,” says the old man, chuckling. “Much older! And I’ve almost managed it.”

“Managed what?”

“At some point in the near future, medicine will reach the point when enough technological progress will be made each year to prolong the life of a human by more than a year. Do you understand what that means?”

Peter shakes his head.

“That means immortality, my boy.”

“That sounds terrible.”

“And I’ve almost made it,” says the old man with a chuckle.

“And what have you learned from all that life experience that could help me with my problem?” asks Peter. “What do you advise me to do now?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Have you noticed that the so-called binary system, in which one only has the choice between the values 0 and 1, has furtively transformed? Into a singular system, as I call it?”

Peter sighs. “I’ve lost you again.”

“You don’t need to understand,” says the old man. “In the singular system you don’t need to make any decisions anymore, because there is only one value: OK.”

“You’re depressing me.”

“Everything’s gonna be all right,” sings the old man. “Everything’s gonna be OK! Everything’s gonna be…” Suddenly he breaks off. “Have you ever heard of the Chess Turk?” he asks.

“No.”

“The Chess Turk was a robot. The first chess robot! With the appearance and clothing of a Turk. He was constructed in the year 1769 of the old timekeeping by an Austrian-Hungarian court official called Wolfgang von Kempelen.”

“Aha,” says Peter. “Where are you going with this?”

“When he was making a move, the robot lifted his left arm, moved a chess figure, and then put his arm, accompanied by a mechanically rattling sound, back onto the cushion. The robot was a sensation. Kempelen traveled to all the big cities. He presented the robot to the Emperor in Vienna. In Berlin, the Turk even won a game against Frederick the Great. Impressive, don’t you think?”

“I guess.”

“The whole world was in awe of this miracle machine, and yet the solution to the puzzle was very simple. Inside the machine, there was a little person steering it.” The old man laughs.

“What’s so funny about that?” asks Peter.

“And we today are human beings with little machines inside steering us. Exactly the other way round, do you see?” He tugs four times on his earlobe. “Funny, don’t you think?”

“I suppose,” murmurs Peter.

“You should ask yourself the following question,” says the old man. “Are we living in a dictatorship whose methods are so sublime that no one notices we’re living in a dictatorship? And following on from that, you should ask yourself the next question: is it actually a dictatorship if no one notices that it’s a dictatorship? If no one feels robbed of their freedom? Freedom is, after all, by no means forbidden in QualityLand. It’s just temporarily out of stock.” The old man yawns. “Do you know, by the way, why it’s called the net?”

“Because we’re caught in it,” says Peter.

“No,” says the man. “Because we’re caught in… Hang on a minute! Kiki must have told you that!”

An analogue alarm clock next to the old man begins to ring.

“Go now,” he says to Peter. “I have to sleep. Otherwise I get migraines.”

“But…” begins Peter.

“You can come back,” says the old man. “I find your ignorance refreshing.”

“I have one more question,” says Peter. “The woman who sent me to you… Kiki… How can I see her again?”

The old man chuckles.

“What?” asks Peter. “What is it?”

“She has a powerful effect on men of your age. But—and please don’t take this the wrong way—it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that the ones she has the most effect on are the hopeless losers.”